Introduction to Ecclesiastes | Ecclesiastes | 04/26/26

All right. Well, grace and peace. If you

don't know me, I'm Josh. I'm one of the

pastors and elders here. And as always,

it's my great honor and privilege to get

to open God's word with you and transmit

what I have received.

As has already been said, today we're

introducing a new book of the Bible. Uh

we've just finished Ephesians. We spent

four or five months there and now we're

transitioning to,

I don't know, you want to call it the

opposite of the book of Ephesians,

Ecclesiastes.

Um, we've titled the sermon series

Ecclesiastes,

what matters question mark. What

matters?

This is in fact the question that this

book is asking and it wants to ask that

question at the deepest, darkest, most

visceral level.

It wants to take us down into sobering

realities so that we would reflect on

them for the sake of life.

All of you have probably wrestled with

some version of the question, does this

matter? Is this worth it? Is this really

important for me to do?

I'm I'm helping to coach multiple

baseball teams and some of the kids are

pretty young and I'm I'm seeing this

lesson played out over and over again

where someone does something wrong and

you go, "Did you just do that?" And they

start doing little kid calculus in their

head. Is it worth it to tell the truth

even if I might get in trouble?

You see that happen over and over again.

Is it worth it? Does it matter? Should I

stay at this job? Should I put another

10 years of my life into this company?

Should I stay in this marriage?

Does it matter?

Do I matter?

Do you matter? Does your life matter?

These are the kinds of deep things the

book of Ecclesiastes is wrestling with.

People live and die. People come and go.

People try and fail, try and succeed,

and none of it ever seems to change

anything.

What actually matters

I'm going to be honest. I've been

reading this book over and over for like

a month and a half. And up until like

this past week, it kind of put me in

sort of an existential funk.

I I was I mean, it's probably a

combination of I just turned 40,

you know, like I'm watching my kids get

bigger and bigger and I could just see

they're going to leave soon and you

know, it's like nothing in life is

permanent.

I've read this book many times before,

but I feel like I've always read it sort

of in passing going through my Bible

reading plan, and I've never really just

sat with it quietly in my office,

turning over the questions that he poses

to us and the assertions he makes to us,

turning them over in my mind.

Reading this book in passing

makes me think about my life the way the

same way you might think about your own

mortality. If you like were watching a

really good movie and one of the main

characters died, be like, "Oh, wow.

That's crazy. I'm going to die too one

day. Okay, moving on." And you move on

with your life. This book has been more

like coming out of the store into the

parking lot and having someone point a

loaded gun at my face and somehow I

escaped the situation and then I came

home.

What matters?

What actually matters when the author of

scripture looks you square in the eye

and says, "Everything you do is going to

come to nothing. You will work and work

and work and die and be forgotten.

Everyone you love is here for a little

while, then they will die too.

Everywhere you look for meaning in this

world, it's going to be like grasping

after wind. And you will feel like you

are touching something real only to find

your hand closing around nothing at all.

Like grasping after wind, vanity of

vanities. All is vanity.

This book is about how the wisest person

in the world wrestled with these

questions. how he wrestled with these

realities.

This is a story about how he has

evaluated these things empirically. He's

going to say over and over, I saw under

the sun. I saw.

How would he assess what matters based

on what he can see, based on how things

appear. And this is what I believe his

conclusion is. This is my main point for

today. And without telling you

everything, this is going to be where we

are basically taking the book. Main

point. Understanding life appears beyond

our grasp.

Understanding life appears beyond our

grasp. So fear God in hope of his

redemption.

Understanding life appears beyond our

grasp. So fear God in hope of

redemption. Please open your Bibles to

Ecclesiastes chapter 1.

Ecclesiastes 1 · chapter mention

This sermon today is an introduction to

the book. Um, our pattern as you know is

to to start a book and then go through

passage by passage unpacking it in

detail. We're not starting that today.

Today is an introduction. So, let me

start by just reading the first three

verses which I believe set up the whole

question that the book is wrestling

with. Let's humble our minds and open

our hearts. Um, if you're looking for

it, it's Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes.

I don't imagine you're all going to

Ecclesiastes all the time in scripture.

Um, but Ecclesiastes chapter 1, we're

Ecclesiastes 1 · chapter mention

going to look at verses 1 through3. Hear

God's word.

The words of the preacher, the son of

David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil at

which he toils under the sun? This is

the word of God. Lord, would you help us

grapple with these big questions today

so that we are prepared to face them in

real life when the day of tragedy comes.

Amen.

So, I want to just kind of talk with you

about what I've come to conclude

studying this book, reading scholarship

on it. And I want to talk about three

things. First, what this book is. I want

to talk about what this book is. Second,

I want to talk about what this book is

about.

And third, I want to talk about how this

book fits into the story of God's

redemption, into redemptive history as

God is unfolding it across time.

So, let's start with what this book is.

We always start every sermon series on a

new book by interacting about who wrote

the book, who they wrote it to, and what

the circumstances were concerning the

writing. But in this example, in the

example of Ecclesiastes, that question

is very elusive. And let me tell you

why. When you first read through the

book, you naturally conclude, oh,

Solomon, King Solomon's the author of

this book. And you look at church

history and you see that for the first

1500 years or so that far back as we

have records, everyone kind of took for

granted. This is written by Solomon.

But in the last 3 to 400 years, people

have made two really noteworthy

observations about this book. The first

is that the author of this book is not

the preacher, the son of David, the king

of Jerusalem. The author is someone who

introduces the preacher in verses 1- 11

and then offers a concluding summary at

the end of the book in chapter 12. The

preacher himself doesn't start speaking

until chapter 1:12.

So observation one is that the author is

not necessarily the preacher. The

preacher is presented like a character

in the story kind of and the author is

going to give us commentary on what the

preacher says. So this is kind of a

unique

as a book in scripture. Um and it's just

important to note that. So then the

second thing is something that you can't

see in English, but many Bible scholars,

even very conservative ones, have

pointed out that there's features in the

original language that suggest a much

later date than the time of Solomon. For

instance, there's multiple Persian words

that show up in the book. And for those

of you who don't remember biblical

history, King Solomon wrote was was

living very early like 11 10,900

something like that. That was about

400ish years before the exile into

Babylon where they spoke Farsy Persian.

So it's really strange that you have

these much later words occurring in this

book. And then there's a few other

things like that that have made people

go like, "Wow, this really doesn't look

like it was written back when Solomon

was writing." So trying to nail down who

wrote this and when it was written is

actually harder to resolve than first

appears. But what we can say from

looking at the book is at very least the

author wants you to see these words as

coming from Solomon. He wants you to be

thinking about the example of Solomon's

life as you consider what he says.

It's very possible, if not likely, that

these are Solomon's words transmitted

down through students to us and put

together at a later date by one of his

disciples or something like that. That's

a very likely explanation. I just can't

prove that. It's it's just it's hard to

it's hard to say for sure. So, I just

wanted to convey that. So, the first

thing to say is that authorship and date

are really difficult. But thankfully

thankfully I don't think that subtracts

at all from our ability to understand

the book. The book is wrestling at its

core with questions about the meaning of

life in a way that doesn't seem to be

very dependent on the context.

I don't care where you live or when you

live. That wrestling of like when I die

is my life going to have any

significance? That's not a contextual

That's something everyone everywhere for

all of time has wondered about.

So since we don't know for sure who

wrote the book or when many folks like

to call the speaker Cohelith. Cohelith

is the Hebrew word translated as

preacher in verse one. Cohelith is the

voice of the king who speaks and in the

beginning and the end you have the voice

of the author who has gathered this

together for us.

So the first thing this book is is it's

the reflections of Cohelith who is a

character like Solomon who is king in

Jerusalem.

The second thing I want to say about

this book is an interpretive point that

Eric and I will need to make a case for

as we go through the text. I believe

that this book represents a progression

of thought.

So when we start the first the first

couple weeks of this going through this

are going to be bleak. you know, he's he

seems lost in how he's proceeding

forward with these thought experiments.

And I think you can actually trace a

progression of a a a growing clarity as

the book unfolds about what matters

most.

I'm saying that out front because there

are smart people who disagree with that.

Um, who think that this book is kind of

a wild collection of thoughts and don't

really know how to resolve them. But I

want to state from the front that I

disagree with them. I think this book

has something helpful and positive to

say about life under the sun.

Finally, in terms of what is this, I

think that this book belongs in the

wisdom section of our libraries.

Um, it's dealing with issues of wisdom.

the author. Um, there are ways that this

is similar and there are ways that this

is dissimilar to other wisdom

literature, but at the end of the day,

it's a book of grappling of what it

means to live wisely in light of what

you know.

Yes, the fundamental question is what

actually matters, but the what matters

question is constantly causing the

author to make assertions about how we

should then live.

So I believe this book is a sustained

reflection on the mystery and the

apparent incomprehensibility of life on

earth. And the author is going to note

that life is full of frustrations, full

of conundrums that we cannot control or

even fully understand. And alongside of

that is the is the reality that

everything around us, good, bad, is

temporary, elusive, and fleeting.

Life under the sun is real. It's

meaningful, but it's temporary and we're

unable to grasp it.

That's what this book is, is a

discussion of that. So, let's now talk

about what this book is about.

This book is about coming to grips with

reality.

It's about

getting your head around what the world

really is, what your life really is in

light of all that we know about the

world.

This is the gift of the book. In fact,

it invites us to consider these things,

what these things mean before we get to

our deathbeds and to let it reorient us

in how we

engage the world.

The most important word in the book of

Ecclesiastes is the word he. It's a

Hebrew word which our ESV translates as

the word vanity. So when he says vanity

of vanities, all is vanity. He's saying

he of he all is hevil.

So that word shows up 38 times in the

book. So it's pretty important to the

book.

My problem with the translation choice

of the ESV is vanity has a decidedly

negative connotation to it.

Some other Bible translations go even

further and they say the word means

meaningless.

Meaningless. Meaningless. All is

meaningless. They interpret cohelith as

looking at the world and seeing no

meaning at all.

And if you choose to translate he with a

word carrying a negative connotation, it

actually really shapes how you read it.

It shapes how you think about it when

you walk away.

And it's actually hard to overstate how

true that is. It massively impacts the

way you read the book. So here's my big

issues with the negative interpretation.

My biggest one is that the author's

conclusion at the end of this book is

that even if everything is he, your

choices matter to God because God's

going to bring everything into judgment.

Even if life is apparently impossible

for you to comprehend, how you live

matters to God because God sees it all.

So how can he possibly say everything is

meaningless if it means something to

God?

That doesn't follow from my perspective.

My other core concern is that the word

doesn't really have a positive or

negative connotation in Hebrew. It means

vapor.

That word he like smoke. It's like when

you're go outside on a really cold

morning and you breathe and there's like

that

moisture that comes out of your mouth

that looks like, you know, when you were

a kid and you pretended you were smoking

a cigarette.

Um,

it's vapor.

he that that's what he's thinking of as

he

everything is like that. You see it,

it's there. It's real, but you can't

grasp it. You can't control it. You see

it, and as soon as you think you've got

your head around what it looks like,

it's gone. Everything he's saying is he.

So, if you're planning on reading

through the book in preparation for this

study in the coming months, I would like

to make a suggestion. And I really

encourage you grab one of those

journals. You know, I don't come up here

to preach sermons because I think it's a

cool thing to do. I actually want you to

learn. Um, I want to help you better

understand how to engage your life

before the Lord so that you're prepared

to meet him in eternity. Um, as you're

reading through those books, whenever

the you see Hannity, just uh vanity,

just say he often

in the author's mind. I think that would

be helpful in in terms of and as you

read, look at how he uses the word and

ask yourself the question, do I agree

with what Josh is saying or not?

So this book is first and foremost a

reflection on the fact that everything

in the world is he. Everything under the

sun is fleeting, mysterious, beyond our

control and we can't seem to understand

it all.

But the book goes a step further.

Cohelis says there is something

fundamentally crooked about the world

and it's related to something that God

has done.

the issues of pain and death and emnity

and toil

those are he doesn't specifically say

this but those are all words that come

from Genesis chapter 3 at the fall of

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

creation.

Cohelith is helping us look at the curse

fleshed out in a manner of speaking and

he does he shows us this in a bunch of

surprising ways.

Coheld is going to point out that

something is deeply broken in the world

in a way that's beyond our ability to

fix.

He says, "We witness injustice happening

all the time to people who don't deserve

it. The righteous appear to be oppressed

and the wicked appear to prosper. How

can that be?

No one anywhere can seem to control

their circumstances.

No matter how much money you accumulate,

no matter how much influence you gain,

no matter how carefully you lay out your

plans, everything everywhere always

seems like it's constantly on the verge

of all falling apart. And it doesn't

seem to matter how much money you make.

It just keeps being the case.

There's also the problem of death. No

matter what we do or how hard we work,

either for good or for evil, all our

lives end the same. He's going to say

that a couple different ways. we will

all die.

And to add to that, there's this tragedy

of human ignorance. Things happen all

the time and things will continue to

happen all the time that will make you

go, why is this happening?

Why would the Lord let this happen to

me?

And the raw and real truth that Cohelith

wants to bring before you is we don't

actually know.

He doesn't give you an answer at the end

of the book.

People come to me all the time when

something terrible happens and it's

almost like hardwired into us to go, why

is this happening?

Why would God allow this? Why wouldn't

God stop this? Where is God in this? And

this is tragic.

It's part of what's crooked about the

world. Bad things happen and we don't

know why. We know God is here. We know

God is with us, but we don't know and

we're never given the answer to why.

On top of all this injustice, lack of

control, the promise of death, the

tragedy of ignorance is also this issue

of toil and frustration at work.

For Cohelith, he's going to have a lot

to say about that. But one of the things

he's going to point out is that how

frustrating it is that effort doesn't

guarantee success. You can work super

duper duper hard and then it all just

falls apart for reasons that were

totally outside of your control. Happens

all the time. Not because you did

something wrong, but because the world

is bent. It's crooked.

Now, at this point, you're probably

thinking, "Geez, Josh, why are we

studying this book again?"

Like, "Holy cow, this is really

depressing."

The answer is because this is honest.

And second,

it's got some really helpful things to

add to the picture. But before I go to

the helpful things to add to the

picture, could you imagine trying to

worship a god and put your faith in a

Bible that didn't address this kind of

thing? That didn't actually ask and try

to answer the question in a way that's

going to be useful to your soul.

I thank God for this book of the Bible.

So quickly to recap, this book is about

making sense of the reality that

everything in life is he that it's a

vapor and we can't grasp it. And because

it's he bec uh and it's vapor because

something is fundamentally crooked about

the world. Our lives are haunted with

injustice, chaos, death, toil, and

ignorance. But that's also not the whole

picture.

Just because the world is crooked

doesn't mean the world is completely

broken.

Alongside these terrible things, there's

actually some really, really good things

about life of the world.

There's joy.

There's love.

He's going to tell us a bunch of times,

and you know, as we go through this

book, I'm going to insist that you obey

this, that one of the gifts God has

given us is to eat and drink and be

merry, to go eat good food with people

you care about. The Bible exhorts you to

do that in light of your mortality.

Isn't that cool?

I know feasting is good. I've I've

thought that for a long time because God

commands it. It must be good. But this

book has taken that to a deeper level

for me. You should enjoy good food with

people you love because that is one of

the great goods that God has given us to

enjoy under the sun. We'll talk more

about that, I'm sure. He also exhorts us

to do work that is satisfying and

meaningful for us. He's like, "Work is

going to be marked by toil and

frustration, so you might as well be

frustrated and working hard at something

that you think is good. Do something

good. You can do meaningful work in the

world." He tells us that one of the

greatest gifts of life on earth is

friendship and companionship.

A cord of one strand is easily broken,

but if you interweave your life into

relationships with people who care about

you, you become almost impossible to

break.

Friendship and companionship is a

tremendous gift for life under the sun.

also marriage and romantic love. These

are goods which we ought to celebrate.

You should try to enjoy your marriage.

You should try to do things that make

marriage more enjoyable. You should

repent of things that you're doing that

make it less enjoyable for your wife,

like teasing her and stuff.

I don't know anybody who does that.

Love is good. He's going to tell us life

itself, he says, is a blessing and a

gift. Something many of us forget to be

alive is a gift.

You woke up today with a fresh

opportunity to turn everything around.

Reverence for God is the ultimate gift.

Revering the living God is what makes

life ultimately meaningful and good. But

the author's big point is that all of

these things, the good things and the

bad things, all of them are he.

They're all passing away. None of them

are solid or permanent.

The bads are really bad. They are

actually terrible, but they are he. The

goods are good, and they're actually

very good, but they too are he. If you

think the goods in this world will ever

be able to stabilize you and bring an

end to the chaos of your you're

mistaken,

that's not what they were created to do.

They're good. They're not ultimate.

There's nothing ultimate under the sun.

And so the big question of the book then

is and the thing that we have to work

through like a gut-wrenching level is

what do we do with that?

What do we do with the fact that all of

it is he? All of it's passing away, good

and bad.

And the answer of the book is you should

obey God and hope in his redemption.

If you try and rest your hope and faith

on anything in this world under the sun,

it will move underneath your feet like

loose sand.

I love my wife. I mean, you I don't know

how well all of you know me, but I have

a deep deep deep deep loving heart. I'm

like a big giant puppy dog.

And

one of the reasons I've been in an

existential funk was just thinking about

this is telling me like your wife is

going to die and there's nothing you can

do about it.

The woman you love, the bride of my

youth who I cannot imagine life without

is he.

Our marriage is going to end one day.

And one of the things this book has been

doing this month is forcing me to come

to terms with the fact that no matter

what I do, there's nothing I can do to

undo that.

And so, what do I do with that?

Where do we go with that?

Where could I plant my feet on something

solid in this world? And the answer of

the book is you can plant your feet

only, ever, and always on the unchanging

God. The God who made everything and

who's bringing all things to redemption.

who tells us what is right and promises

to bring judgment for his glory and our

good. So I want to close by thinking

together about how this book fits into

the story of redemption because clearly

what's the author says at the end about

trusting in God, hoping in God, that's

true,

but we know in Christ that there is so

so so so much more.

By the way, if you've ever wondered what

Christians mean by the redempt the

resurrection changed everything, that's

one of the things

I want to close with a final point to

show you why I think going through this

exercise together is going to have a

profound payoff. And I don't want to

show everything. I want to leave a

little surprise for the end. Although,

who knows if I'm going to be able to do

that. it. Consider for a moment during

the days of the king, God, as as he's

writing, God has sovereignly ordained a

world that includes frustration and

limitation and mystery. And this all

happened because of the fall. And now

things are permanently like this. And

the author Cohelith, the author and

Cohelith perceive this. They figure it

out. The Ecclesiastes 7:13 says,

Ecclesiastes 7:13

"Consider the work of God. who can make

straight what he has made crooked?" End

quote.

That verse is making a claim that there

are broken things in the world. There

are things about the world that are

fractured and it is beyond human ability

to fix.

And as much as that bums me out, that is

the truth. And the implication is stop

trying to control what can't be

controlled.

But when you get to the prophets,

they start to look ahead

to a Messiah who's going to come.

And in Isaiah chapter 40, God says,

Isaiah 40 · chapter mention

"Behold, I prepare a me a messenger to

prepare the way for me. And when he

comes,

he's going to lift up the valleys and

lower the mountains. And he's going to

make the rough places smooth. He's going

to make the crooked things straight.

So, in the prophets, we're already

beginning to look ahead to a day when

things aren't going to be like this

anymore. But it's something God has to

do. It's not something that we're going

to ever have the power to do. And when

the Lord Jesus finally comes into the

world, he appears and the crookedness

remains.

And you think, well, he heals and stuff,

but then people die again. He resurrects

and they die again. And you wonder what

kind of making straight is this? What

does he what has he come to do? And you

realize when he's betrayed and he's

handed over to the Roman authorities and

he undergoes a false trial

that all of the most crooked things in

the world that have been or can be are

about to happen to him.

The truly innocent one is about to be

condemned because of the wickedness of

evil men. The one person who is not

guilty of sin is about to suffer under

the wrath of

for our sins

and he takes all the brokenness into

himself

and he suffers and dies in our place.

And then God takes the most crooked

thing that has ever happened or will

ever happened and transforms it into the

most glorious salvation humanly

imaginable. And you realize, wow, you're

not coming to make the crooked straight.

You're coming to make the crooked good.

You're coming to bring blessing out of

all of this. There is no sorrow in

heaven, but there are scars because they

abound to the glory of God in Christ.

God.

Our minds are so small and low. We think

if you could just fix it. If you just

take this pain away, it all be better.

And God goes, actually, I'm going to

take that pain and transform it into a

stallion that you will ride into glory

forever and ever.

Why did I bring notes up here?

Sorry. Excuse me. In Romans Romans 8, we

realize that in the resurrection, Jesus

is now seated as king, but he hasn't yet

fully and finally dealt with the

brokenness of the world. He says, "All

of creation in 8 20 and 21 longs eagerly

for the revealing of the sons of God."

The the creation is is bursting at the

seams to be made right. And he says in

Romans 8:28 that God is taking all the

Romans 8:28

crooked things that are happening. The

things that happen in your life, the

things that are hap going to happen

tomorrow, and he's going to use them for

your good.

That is a statement about the nature of

the world after the resurrection. All

these things that are crooked, that go

wrong, God is going to ultimately use

them to bless us, to do good, for our

ultimate good.

And when Christ comes again, all that is

crooked will pass away. When he

establishes his kingdom on the earth,

there'll be no more death, no more

sorrow, no more pain, no more sickness.

All that was crooked will be healed. And

nothing of what happened will be a

waste. And all will be turned to the

glory of God. And the healing of the

nations will begin. And all of God's

people will enter into his blessing and

joy forever and ever.

Are there things in your life that are

crooked?

Do you have the power to change them?

Maybe a little bit, maybe for a time,

but not in the ultimate way.

So, what do we do with that crookedness

today?

We trust God who takes crosses and turns

them into the salvation of the world.

We trust the God of redemption.

Creation is already bursting at the

seams. The untwisting of the crooked has

already begun. We're called to trust him

and obey his commandments as we wait for

his redemption.

What matters?

What really matters

when you have a gun pointed at your face

and you manage to make it home to tell

the tale?

The truth is

that you love the people around you,

that you kiss your children, that you

hug your wife, that you enjoy good food,

that you praise your God, and that you

do it in hope that he takes even things

like that and causes them to abound to

his glory.

This is why we're going through this

book. Let's pray.